


How Orihime Found Out

by purpleswans



Series: Bleach / Tokyo Ghoul AU [2]
Category: Bleach, Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Female Friendship, Friendship, Mild Gore, Minor Violence, Other, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-02
Updated: 2015-03-02
Packaged: 2018-03-15 22:18:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3464129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purpleswans/pseuds/purpleswans
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Orihime's brother has been missing for two months. Ichigo starts to think that it might be related to Ghoul violence, but can he and Rukia do anything to help their human friend?</p>
            </blockquote>





	How Orihime Found Out

**Author's Note:**

> Hey all! So, originally that Hitsukarin / Tokyo Ghoul AU was going to be a stand-alone one-shot, but a couple of people expressed some interest in it and I ended up thinking about it a lot. In the end, I realized that there were a lot of other stories that I could make in this universe and decided to expand on it. There will end up being a bunch of slightly interconnected on-shots based on this universe, and this is one of them. Please realize that updating this universe will be very sporadic and I don't even know more that just about 2 or 3 stories to do after this one, so you can't expect any kind of regular update schedule.
> 
> This story centers around a great friendship that I feel like doesn't get enough appreciation or even recognition in the Bleach fandom due to shipping wars: Rukia and Orihime. When I started thinking about expanding this universe, I realized how much their relationship is kind of like Touka's and Yoriko's, as well as some good ways to parallel certain canon events. As such, this one-shot was born!
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own either Tokyo Ghoul or Bleach

“Rukia-chan! Say ah!”

Rukia resisted the urge to grimace as her best friend Orihime fed her some home-cooked food. It was a small bite, so it wasn’t difficult for Rukia to swallow whole. She faked chewing about 10 times and put on a pleasant expression, just like she did every time she was required to consume human food.

“It’s pretty good,” Rukia lied. “Where’d you get the recipe?”

“I created it myself!” Orihime explained. “I marinated calamari in teriyaki sauce and coated it in wasabi before frying it like tempura.” She pushed the bento toward Rukia. “Don’t be afraid to take more! I brought enough to share with everyone, but Tatsuki and all the others said they’re too full…”

 _I guess it must sound gross to humans too,_ Rukia considered. _I suppose one more bite won’t be too terrible…_ Rukia picked up her chopsticks and brought another piece of Orihime’s concoction to her mouth.

Orihime sighed. “You’re the only person who appreciates my cooking, Rukia.”

 _I wouldn’t say that_ , Rukia noted. _All human food tastes just as disgusting to me. I just have a lot of practice faking interest._

Rukia was saved from having to force down a third bite by the sudden appearance of a young man distracting Orihime. “Oh, Kurosaki-kun! You were able to make it to school today?”

Ichigo frowned. “Yeah, why wouldn’t I be at school?”

Orihime fidgeted. “Uh, no reason. Forget I said that.” She tried to hide her blush behind her loose hair.

Rukia felt a pang of regret when she realized why her friend was worried. Orihime had introduced her to Ichigo several months ago, and it didn’t take long for Rukia to figure out what he was and vice versa. After establishing that neither one of them was interested in eating Orihime (or killing anyone for that matter,) Rukia brought him to her place of employment, Seireitei Coffee Shop. As he got to know the people there more, Ichigo ended up getting involved in doing favors for some of the ghouls in need, and sometimes that made him skip school to help someone escape the doves or recover from fighting Aogiri.

Orihime was a smart girl. Honestly, a little too smart. And she paid close attention to the people she cared about. She knew that something was up with Ichigo, she just didn’t know what.

And she never could know. If she did find out, Rukia would have to kill her.

“Hey, have you heard any news about your brother?” Ichigo suddenly asked.

Rukia froze. That idiot! What is he thinking bringing that up?

Orihime shifted in her seat. “Uh, no I haven’t. I’m sure the police are still looking for him, though.”

Ichigo nodded. “He disappeared about 3 months ago, right?”

Orihime gave a small nod, avoiding looking in another direction.

Ichigo continued to pry. “And the path he was on, is there any chance it would have taken him past that construction project in the 20th ward?”

Orihime looked up, surprised by this question. “Um, I guess so. He was coming from around that area, so it’s possible.”

Rukia decided that he friend had suffered enough of Ichigo’s unsympathetic questioning. “Hey Ichigo, you should try this!” she declared as she shoved down Ichigo’s throat the biggest piece of Orihime’s concoction she could find.

The look on Ichigo’s face was priceless. Usually he was an expert at fake-eating human food, but he wasn’t able to swallow immediately since it was someone other than himself putting the food in his mouth. As such, he had no choice but to revel in the disgusting taste as he chewed and swallowed the food not intended for his species.

After a few nervous seconds, Ichigo succeeded in swallowing the whole thing and glared at Rukia. “What was THAT for?”

“It’s Orihime’s home cooking.” Rukia replied innocently. “What’d you think?”

“N…no. Don’t worry about it Ichigo, I know it’s horrible!” Orihime nervously assured him. She looked like she was about to cry from mortification.

Ichigo finally noticed Orihime’s obvious emotional distress. “No, it’s good. Rukia’s serving techniques are just terrible,” he explained.

 _Oh Ichigo, you’re just too tease. Still, what’s up with these questions…_ Rukia wondered.

Casually, Rukia leaned forward and brushed the bottle of Soy Sauce, making it topple and spill all over Ichigo.

“What the… Gya!” Ichigo complained when he saw the mess.

“Oh no! I’m sorry Ichigo, I’m just so clumsy. Here, let’s go get you cleaned up.” Rukia dragged him away to the men’s bathroom, ignoring all the weird looks she was getting.

“R-Rukia! This is the men’s room! You can’t be in here!” Ichigo protested.

“What were you thinking, asking Orihime about her brother? You know how hard it is for her!” Rukia asked, unaffected by Ichigo’s exclamations.

“Look, I have a reason. Now would you please get out before somebody sees us and starts some kind of rumor?” Ichigo continued to protest.

As if to confirm his worries, Keigo walked and squeaked “S-sorry for interrupting!” and ran off.

Ichigo groaned. “Well, there goes my reputation.”

“Boo-hoo. Now, what’s the reason why you feel the need to traumatize our friend?” Rukia continued.

Ichigo sighed. “Sora isn’t the only person who’s gone missing in that area. As a matter of fact, enough people have disappeared that the police are starting to take notice. On top of that, there’s a rumor going around that Aogiri is capturing live humans.”

Rukia considered that. “Why would they want live humans? If they’re making a point of keeping them alive, it probably isn’t for regular food… Maybe to keep as pets or something like those weirdoes at the restaurant?”

Ichigo shrugged. “Beats me. However, we do know that they are being kept alive for some reason, we just don’t know why. If Orihime’s brother is one of the people they’ve captured…”

Rukia saw where he was going with this. “Do you want to mask up and look for him tonight?”

Ichigo shook his head. “I want to get a better idea of where he might be first. Keep your eye out for more information about this.”

Rukia nodded. Orihime was her best friend, and she wanted to help her. Even though Orihime was a human and Rukia was a ghoul.

* * *

 

Orihime hummed a little tune as she walked to her apartment after school. It had been a pretty good day in her book. Rukia had enjoyed her cooking, and she had gotten back a perfect score on her math test. She even saw and spoke to Kurosaki-kun, which was always a plus.

Orihime placed her school bag beside the door and took off her shoes, placing it beside her brother’s. She wandered into the living room, thinking about all the housework she had to start. It wasn’t until she turned on the lamp beside her chair that she realized something was wrong.

Her brother had taken his shoes with him when he went missing.

Why then, were his shoes sitting by the door? They hadn’t been there for the last two months.

Better yet, why was her brother sleeping in his chair like nothing was wrong?

Orihime couldn’t believe her eyes. Her big brother, Sora, was sitting in his chair like nothing was wrong. Like he hadn’t just been missing for two months. Like she hadn’t been out of her mind with worry. Like it was any other day.

Orihime stretched out a hand toward Sora. “Big brother? Is that you?”

Sora fidgeted a little before softly opening his eyes. They were the same familiar grey color Orihime had known her entire life, but something still felt… off about them. “Orihime?” he whispered.

Tears were streaming down Orihime’s face. It was her brother, he was back, he was safe. She ran into his arms and started crying into his shoulder like always used to whenever somebody teased her at school as a kid. As just like he used to do then, he wrapped his arms around her and breathed comforting words in her ear. They stayed like that for several minutes until Sora suddenly sniffed and froze, tightening his hold on Orihime until it was almost painful.

Orihime strugged, trying to get her brother to loosen his grasp. “Big brother? What’s wrong?”

“I can smell others’ scents on you.” He whispered. “Others… who are like me.”

His arms squeezed even tighter and Orihime gasped in pain. “Big brother, could you please let me go? I can’t breathe.”

Sora didn’t listen to her. “They want you… because you’re so beautiful. Because you’re so innocent. Because your flesh would be so _tasty_.” His body started shaking. “But I can’t let them take you. You’re my little sister, I’ve got to protect you. You’re _mine_.”

“You know, I thought about you the whole time I was gone?” Sora continued. “They tore me apart and stuck some new material inside me and completely rebuilt who I am, but they couldn’t take away the thought of you. You gave me the strength to keep fighting, to keep resisting until I finally broke out and was able to come home, where you were, so I could protect you. But know I find out that there are others around you who want to hurt you, and I… I can’t have that.”

Orihime finally was able to wiggle out of her brother’s arms. When she stepped back and looked at him, she noticed he had a creepy smile that scared her.

“Hey Orihime, I have an idea,” Sora offered. “How about you and I become one body? That way we’ll always be together and I’ll be able to protect you. Nobody else will be able to hurt you.”

Orihime looked at her brother, scared and unable to understand what he was saying. “Become… one body? Big brother, I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

Suddenly, Orihime was lying on the ground with Sora holding her down. She felt a little ache from where she had fallen on her bottom, but she was too terrified by her brother’s grip on her wrists to worry about that.

“It’s quite simple really. You don’t even have to do anything Orihime.” Sora continued.

“We’ll become one body when I _eat you_.”

Orihime looked in her brother’s eyes. One was still the warm grey she remembered. It was the eye of the brother she loved.

However, the other one was black and red, with black veins extending into the rest of his face. This was the eye of a monster she didn’t know.

Orihime screamed.

Sora quickly moved his right hand to cover her mouth. “Shhh,” he whispered. “You don’t want to attract the police. If they hear you, they’ll kill me just for being a ghoul. Then you’ll be all alone, and your brother’s death would be all your fault. You wouldn’t want that, would you?”

Orihime shook her head, her vision quickly becoming blurry due to the moisture in her eyes. Sora inched closer, his hot breath warming her neck as he leaned in to bite…

Crash!

“Ah, there you are, you one-eyed bastard. We’ve been looking all over for you.”

Orihime felt the weight of her brother disappear and heard a slam against the opposite wall. Slowly, she sat up and saw two men she didn’t recognize wearing masks. One had a fairly lithe build, not too tall and not too muscular, and was wearing a mask with blue stripes. He was leaning against the wall beside a broken window. The other was a large, muscly man wearing a white half-mask covering his jaw. He was holding Sora by the throat, cutting off his air supply.

“No…” Sora choked out. “I won’t… go back there. I’m not… like you guys.”

“Really?” The large brute laughed. “I could have sworn that you were so hungry that you were about to eat you own sister. And you’re not like us? Hey, Ulquiorra,” he addressed the smaller stranger, “what are our orders about this runaway punk again? Can I eat him?”

Orihime squeaked. They wanted to eat her brother? No, she couldn’t allow that.

“We were ordered to bring him back, dead if we had to.” The other stranger stated, his expression emotionless. “I suppose it wouldn’t be to terrible if you took a couple of bites, but the surgeon will need his kakuhou, so you can’t eat that Yammy.”

Sora struggled against the larger man’s grip. “You’ll have to kill me… before I ever go back there. Don’t you dare… involve my sister in this.”

The enormous stranger – Yammy – shrugged. “Well, I guess if that’s what you want,” he remarked and plunged his hand into Sora’s stomach.

Sora’s eyes grew wide for a few moments before all the light in them faded. Orihime shrieked at the top of her lungs until the other stranger – Ulquiorra – muffled her with his hands.

Yammy pulled his hand out of Sora’s body and licked the blood off, letting the corpse of Orihime’s most precious person fall to the ground. “Hm… not bad, for ghoul meat,” the monster noted. “I probably shouldn’t eat any more, or I won’t be able to stop myself.”

Orihime was sobbing. Ulquiorra released her, and she crawled over the her brother’s body and held him close, not caring that she was getting blood all over her uniform. He was limp and wasn’t breathing, but she still couldn’t stop herself from begging him to wake up, to not be dead, to come back to her.

“Hey Ulquiorra, what should we do about the girl?”

Orihime froze.

Ulquiorra sighed. “I suppose we could take her. The surgeon needs more expirements, after all. He had a lot of success with her brother, so there probably isn’t that high of a chance of rejection.”

Orihime could hear Yammy walking toward her. She was shaking. _Someone, please save me._

“What are you Aogiri bastards doing here? I thought we made it clear that this area is protected by the Seireitei.”

Orihime turned to see where the new voice was coming from. Two figures were crouched on the window ledge, one a young man in black clothes and wearing a creepy white mask with read markings covering its left half. The other was a young woman wearing a beautiful white mask, covered in carved designs that made her look like it was made from ice. Something about both of them felt familiar.

Ulquiorra’s eyes grew wide and he turned to his companion. “Yammy, get the artificial one-eye’s body. We need to go.”

Yammy looked confused. “Eh? Come on Ulquiorra, they’re just two punks. We can beat them and get the girl.”

Ulquiorra pointed at the man on the ledge. “That’s the One-eyed Moon. We have standing orders to leave him alone and avoid confrontation. Apparently, the Tree has _plans_ for him.” He said “plans” like it was something to be feared.

Yammy contemplated his partner’s words for a while and shrugged. He grabbed Sora’s corpse, not paying any attention to Orihime’s whimpers as she had no choice but to let go.

Ulquiorra and Yammy left through the front door, as though they were just old friends who were done visiting. When the door closed with a soft “click,” the two figures ran up to Orihime.

“Are you okay Orihime?” the young woman asked, reaching out a hand. Her voice sounded very familiar.

The young man snorted. “Of course she’s not. She just watched her brother die right in front of her, didn’t she?” His voice also sounded very familiar.

Orihime started sobbing uncontrollably. It was all just too much.

The young woman in the mask smacked her companion. “You idiot! You just made it worse.”

Suddenly, Orihime realized where she had heard their voices before.

“Rukia? Is that you?”

Both of the masked individuals froze at Orihime’s words. Eventually, the young woman knelled down in front of her and took of the mask, revealing the face of Rukia Kuchiki.

“I was hoping you wouldn’t find out.” Rukia whispered. She opened her eyes, revealing that they had the black-and-red coloring of a ghoul.

Orihime looked into her friend’s eyes. They looked just like how one of her brother’s had looked just before he tried to eat her. How it had looked just before Yammy had killed him. But right now, they were filled with nothing but compassion and friendship. They were they eyes of one of her best friends.

Suddenly, Orihime lunged at Rukia and pulled her into a hug. “I’m… so sorry Rukia!”

Ruka stiffened. “What… what are you apologizing for? You haven’t done anything wrong!”

Still, Orihime continued to sob into Rukia’s shoulder. She was mourning the loss of her brother, of her innocence, of all those happy days she had spent unaware of how horrible the world could be. And Rukia let her, like a good friend would.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, so that was pretty angsty... I was listening to Running Up That Hill by Placebo on repeat when I was writing the second half, so that might be part of it...
> 
> I kind of want to explore the posibilities of Ulquihime and Ishidahime in this universe, building off the events of this. Those both had the potential for some real gut-wretching angst in this universe.
> 
> Please read, review, follow, and favorite!


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